


Like Timidity, Contagious

by Cleo the Muse (cleothemuse)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: BAMF Hulk, BAMF Jen, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Natasha Is Not Defined By Her Genitalia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-15
Updated: 2015-11-15
Packaged: 2018-05-01 19:25:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5217842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cleothemuse/pseuds/Cleo%20the%20Muse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before the attack on Strucker's stronghold, Bruce received a letter from his Aunt Elaine, informing him that his cousin Jen was very ill. After the battle with Ultron, Bruce wakes up in his aunt and uncle's backyard.</p><p>Hulk is tired of Puny Banner running away from what matters to him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like Timidity, Contagious

**Author's Note:**

> How do you get She-Hulk into the MCU? Bruce is far too aware of the toxicity of his blood to ever attempt to give his cousin an emergency transfusion, so it would have to be something extreme to get him to willingly donate blood to her. This fic also attempts to make sense of the dreams Wanda gave each of the Avengers, as well as why those dreams had the effect they did, particularly on Natasha's behavior.
> 
> Unbetaed, because I'm a hypocrite with no patience ;)
> 
> Possible mild TW for coercion: Hulk essentially holds Bruce hostage until he agrees to help.

“Like timidity, bravery is also contagious.”  
—Munshi Premchand, Hindustani novelist

The letter came to Bruce through a very indirect route, and it's little short of a miracle that it reached him at all.

It was originally mailed to Culver University, where it first came into the custody of the kindly octogenarian who was an institution unto himself at the campus mail room because he'd never forgotten a name or face in over 50 years at the university. Knowing Bruce was no longer there but having never learned where he’d gone, the mail clerk slipped the letter into a manila envelope labeled “Dr. Ross” and left it in the biology department’s box.

The biochemist was understandably quite surprised to receive personal correspondence intended for Bruce so long after his departure, and debated for a moment picking up a phone to call the sender of the letter and apologize. But then, remembering the Hulk's involvement defending New York from an alien invasion, Betty Ross decided instead to forward the letter to SHIELD headquarters, hoping they knew where Bruce was.

Unfortunately, that leg of the journey took part during the Battle of the Potomac, so the letter languished in a Washington, D.C. post office while the various alphabet agencies fought over SHIELD's—and HYDRA's—smoking remains. The DOD eventually won out, and a group of Army code monkeys at Fort Knox spent sixteen weeks reprogramming a mail sorting machine to screen the backlog using a database of over 500,000 keywords flagged with 24 different levels of priority. The modified sorter was then trucked to D.C. and set up in a warehouse where a half-dozen E4s put in their eight hours a day feeding unopened letters into the machine and shrink-wrapping mail crates as they filled.

Seven months after the fall of SHIELD, Bruce's letter finally went through the machine, but the optical character recognition struggled with the hand-written original address. The original writing had been crossed out with a different color of ink and had “c/o SHIELD” added to the label in an equally-different hand. The specialist manning the machine at the time hadn't dealt with cursive since learning just enough of it in third grade to scrawl his own signature, and punched in "Bruce Bamer" and "Calner University" as possible keywords. Neither was a match and the return address similarly yielded no results, so the letter got flagged for further review.

The staff sergeant in charge of the mail sorting operation was a few years older than his subordinate, and therefore had less difficulty reading the script. His entry of "Bruce Banner" yielded immediate results: priority one redirection to the office of General Thaddeus Ross. However, Ross had been forced into retirement not long after the Harlem incident—he maxed out his time-in-rank without receiving a promotion—and all of his official mail was forwarded to his former administrative assistant, who now performed the same role for General Glenn Talbot.

Captain Gideon had enough clearance to recognize the significance of the addressee's name, and enough common sense to recognize the letter as personal correspondence almost certainly _not_ Hulk-related. She opened the letter and began to read, then frowned at the date. Realizing three-quarters of a year had passed since the original postmark, the captain slipped the letter back into its envelope, stuck a Post-It onto it labeled "URGENT", then placed the envelope inside an overnight delivery sleeve addressed to her former college roommate, Maria Hill, now working at Stark Tower.

Maria Hill was the epitome of efficiency and compartmentalization, seeing as how she worked for three different groups at once: Stark Industries (officially), the Avengers (unofficially), and the slowly-rebuilding-in-secrecy SHIELD (completely off the record). On the day Bruce’s letter arrived, she also received a quarterly budget projection for SI’s R&D division, a progress update on a new medical project for the Maria Stark Foundation branch office in Gulmira, and two long-awaited confirmations from acting SHIELD Director Phil Coulson. The proposal went to Pepper Potts’ desk and the budget projection was given to Tony Stark—with a firm admonition to JARVIS to actually make him _read_ it and to specifically find out why the circuits lab in North Carolina was requesting one hundred forty _thousand_ gallons of industrial-grade solvent. The letter was left on Bruce’s workstation, then Maria continued upstairs to the residential levels to give Captain Rogers a briefing on Unit 616's successful assault on HYDRA's arctic base and an overview of the intelligence said mission had gained on HYDRA’s operation in Sokovia.

Bruce returned from a slightly awkward “good luck at the conference” lunch with Doctor Foster and her intern-turned-personal-assistant-slash-publicist-slash-BFF Darcy Lewis. Foster spent the majority of the lunch scribbling notes and equations on napkins with a BIC pilfered from the hostess stand while Darcy kept up a running commentary about Thor’s and Tony’s equally-and-oppositely abysmal tastes in music, the as-yet unidentified laundry bandit who kept shrinking Steve’s t-shirts, Clint and Sam’s on-going movie quote war, and that Bruce really should consider asking “the hot ninja assassin chick” out for tea and tantric yoga.

The thing was, Bruce really _did_ like Natasha a lot, but he wasn’t sure he was right for her. Natasha was fierce, independent, funny, and so very, very brave, and Bruce was certain the two of them couldn’t be more opposite. They hadn’t exactly started off on the right foot, either, what with him deliberately scaring her when she tracked him down in Kolkata, nor when she’d been the first one to face off with the Other Guy during the attack on the Helicarrier carried out by a brainwashed Clint at Loki’s behest.

But, with time and proximity, Bruce and Natasha had become closer to one another. It was Natasha who figured out the Other Guy’s attraction to the color red, Natasha who found out the Other Guy had a soft spot for soft-spoken women, and Natasha who discovered that both Bruce and the Other Guy could be conditioned to accept certain trigger phrases to either bring out the beast or put him away for the day. Natasha wielded flirtation with as much finesse as Rogers did his shield—as equally effective for defense as offense—but Bruce was coming to think there was marked difference in the way she treated him versus the other members of the team.

Natasha handled each team member differently: her relationship with Barton was clearly best friend and pesky younger sister, while with Rogers it was adoring older sister and partner-in-mischief. She and Tony delightfully declared themselves “frenemies”, but she was somewhat distant and formal with Thor, who she’d understandably spent much less time with than the others. As for her relationship with Bruce…

Well, it was complicated. Bruce was pretty sure nothing in his life would ever _not_ be complicated.

The letter, when he found it upon his return to his lab, was surprisingly straight-forward.

 

> _Dear Bruce,_
> 
> _I hope this letter finds you well, as it’s been over ten years since the last time we heard from you. The last we knew, you were working on a project at Culver University, and so I pray that even if you are no longer employed there, that someone will see fit to forward this letter to wherever you may have gone since then._
> 
> _Your cousin, Jennifer, is very ill._
> 
> _Jen, as you know, has been battling one thing or another all her life. Most recently, she was diagnosed with a kidney dysfunction called “Berger’s disease” and put on a strict diet. Unfortunately, the disease has now progressed to the point where Jen's own kidneys are beginning to fail, and she will soon require dialysis. Her doctor has already put her on the transplant waiting list, but given her other health problems, he fears that if a suitable donor isn't found within a year, Jen won't make it._
> 
> _Bruce, you've always been Jen's hero. Your bone marrow saved her life when she was a baby, so we know you're compatible. I know it's a lot, asking you to consider parting with one of your kidneys, but I wouldn't ask it if I didn't think this was her only chance. I know this is a conversation we should have had face-to-face, but I can't bear to leave my baby girl alone during this time. If she heard me say that, she would roll her eyes and protest that's she's okay and a grown woman to boot, but she's still my baby girl._
> 
> _Bruce, please let me know as soon as possible if this is something you are willing and able to do. Morris and I will take care of your plane tickets and put you up in our house or a hotel for as long as you need. Anything, just ask. If you can come through with another miracle for our baby girl, there's almost nothing you could ask of us that would be too much._
> 
> _I will not tell Jen about this letter, however, as I don't want to get her hopes up if you are unable to help. She still thinks of you as her superhero cousin who punched Cancer in the face for her, and the last thing I want is for you to feel bullied into helping._
> 
> _If you need a while to think on it, please do. There's still a chance a match can be found from the donor pool. I'll let you know if that happens before you've made a decision._
> 
> _All my love,_
> 
> _Aunt Elaine_

Blanching, Bruce checked the date on the letter—almost ten months old—and fell heavily into his chair. "JARVIS? I need you to check on something… some _one_ for me."

"Of course, sir," the AI replied as courteously as ever. "For whom should I be searching?"

"Jennifer Walters in the Los Angeles area. Father's name: Morris Walters; mother's name: Elaine Banner Walters."

"Searching… found. Jennifer Walters, age 31, assistant district attorney in Orange County. Born August 14th, 1983 at Mission Hospital in Mission Viejo, graduated salutatorian from Trabuco Hills High School in 2001. Graduated summa cum laude from UC-Irvine in 2005, majoring in sociology. Graduated summa cum laude from UCLA School of Law in 2008."

Bruce couldn't help but smile, impressed with his cousin's brilliance. She'd always wanted to be an astronaut when she was a kid, and thought Bruce's work in biophysics could one day put him on a space shuttle she was piloting. Of course, he'd always known her fragile health wouldn't let her get anywhere near the space program, and he was glad to see she'd applied her intelligence to a field in which she could otherwise thrive. Her parents’ dual influence was certainly to credit: Morris Walters had been in law enforcement for as long as Bruce could remember, and Elaine Walters went to school to become a social worker after her brother Brian… snapped.

The scientist shuddered, shoving the memory of his abusive father back into the dark corner of his brain where it belonged. Some things were better left in the past.

"Was there anything further you required, sir?" JARVIS asked.

"She's still alive, then?"

"No death certificate has been filed. One moment… there is a recent admission on file at UCLA Medical Center for _a_ Jennifer Walters, but I will need to violate several privacy laws to verify it is her."

Bruce bit his lip, then shrugged. "As long as the hack can't be traced."

"I find your lack of faith disturbing,"JARVIS deadpanned. "Accessing patient records… It is indeed her: Miss Walters was admitted three days ago after she collapsed during a deposition. She is presently being treated for anemia, chronic low blood pressure, and amyloidosis, all of which have been exacerbated by her impaired kidney function. However, barring any further complications, she is likely to be released later this week."

Pulling off his glasses, Bruce scrubbed his face wearily. "So she's okay."

"Alive, yes," JARVIS agreed, "but hardly 'well'. According to her records, Miss Walters has been on dialysis for nearly six months, and will continue to require treatment for the rest of her life. Life expectancy for a dialysis patient has risen greatly in recent years, with many patients surviving 15 years or more, if they're otherwise healthy."

He sighed and slipped his glasses back on. "Which Jen has never been."

"Regrettably, no."

Not for the first time, Bruce cursed his gamma-irradiated blood. He and Jen were a genetic match for tissue donation, as had been discovered when she was a four year-old leukemia patient in desperate need of a bone marrow transplant. He’d also donated platelets for her in advance of a surgery to correct a defective heart valve at age nine. As one of the few family members he had left, there was little Bruce _wouldn’t_ do for her.

Now, there was nothing he _could_ do.

He rubbed his finger over the letter, tracing the damning word “superhero”. When Jen was seven, she mailed him a picture she’d drawn of a caped figure she’d helpfully labeled “Bruce” punching a giant crab while a small, long-haired figure labeled “Jen” cheered from the sidelines. Elaine’s accompanying letter informed him that Jen’s second-grade class had just learned about constellations, and when the girl learned that Cancer was a crab, she decided that punching it was how Bruce had helped her recover from leukemia.

“Sir, if I may…”

Bruce removed his finger from the letter and self-consciously adjusted his glasses again. “What is it, JARVIS?”

Holograms burst to life as the AI reopened one of Bruce’s recent files, a collaboration (of a sort) with a brilliant geneticist in Seoul. Most prominently displayed was a large, oblong machine that was, in essence, a very complex 3D printer. “While Doctor Cho’s work with Cradle technology is still in its early stages, Miss Walters _may_ be a suitable candidate for organ fabrication testing.”

“That’s… a really great idea, JARVIS,” Bruce replied, surprised and delighted by the computer’s intuitive leap. As a learning program, JARVIS became increasingly complex the more he interacted with living creatures. “We’re still years away from that sort of testing, though, but at least it’s an option.”

“There is another option, sir,” the AI continued, sounding hesitant. “While most of your work on your own blood has shown it to be extremely hostile toward any foreign substances, I took the liberty of comparing your DNA against the genetic profile for Miss Walters on the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network database: five of the six human leukocyte antigens are a match.”

“I know I’m a match for her, JARVIS,” Bruce sighed, waving at the letter, “that’s why Aunt Elaine wrote to me. But with the Hulk… it’s too much of a risk. My blood is toxic enough: I don’t even want to _think_ what an entire _organ_ would do. Even if Jen could survive the transplantation, she’d only end up dead from gamma poisoning… or _worse_.”

“Understood, sir.” There was a moment of silence, and then, “Sir, Captain Rogers has scheduled a mission briefing in approximately four hours. I believe it concerns the whereabouts of Loki’s scepter. Miss Hill has forwarded the contents of a download obtained during a recent covert operation against a remote HYDRA base, and has asked you to review the information for any anomalies.”

Rolling his shoulders, Bruce folded his aunt’s letter and tucked it into the top drawer of his desk, then turned his attention toward a problem he _could_ solve.

*           *           *

The sun was shining rather brightly when Bruce awoke, so he rolled over grumpily and hissed at the twinge of pain in his lower abdomen.

“Bruce, baby, you’re supposed to be resting,” chided a soft voice.

“Too bright,” he grumped, grabbing his pillow and pulling it over his face.

“Hang on.” Muffled footsteps moved around to his side, and then the bed dipped next to him. “There… is that better?”

Cautiously pulling the pillow back, he saw that the blinds had been closed, filtering the light to a comfortable level. He smiled up at Betty, who had reached out to tousle his curls. “Mmm… much better now that you’re here.”

She laughed and gave him a kiss. “Well, I’d have been here sooner, but traffic in this town is a _nightmare_. Jen’s doing fine, though, and the kidney’s already starting to do its job. They’ve moved her out of ICU and into a regular room… she’ll probably get to go home by the end of the week.”

“While we’ll still be stuck on the train to Chicago by then,” Bruce sighed. “Can we trade?”

“You’re horrible,” Betty answered, “and also overdue for pain meds, if that wince you gave a little bit ago is any indication. Did Susie call yet?”

“I, uh, I don’t think so. I didn’t hear the phone, anyway.”

“Hmm… I’ll give her another hour, but then I’m calling the National Guard.”

“Betty!”

“You think I’m joking, but I’m not!” she laughed. “Our teenagers are alone on the other side of the country by themselves… Lane’s got a few grains of common sense in him now and then, but Susie is likely to blow up the garage with one of her experiments!”

Bruce grabbed her hand and kissed the back of it affectionately. “They’ll be fine. They’re good kids.”

“Good kids who have the unsupervised run of the house for a week. We’ll be lucky if the place is still standing by the time we get back.”

“It’s just a house,” Bruce replied, pulling his wife down for another kiss. “Jen’s on the mend, you’re here, our kids are evil geniuses… baby, life doesn’t get any better than this.”

The Maximoff girl stepped back, the hotel room turned into an empty transport jet, and Bruce was overwhelmed with loss… and _anger_.

*           *           *

The sun was shining rather brightly when Bruce awoke, half-naked as usually happened after the Hulk had been unleashed. Unusually for a post-Hulk awakening, he had a splitting headache.

“Ow,” he muttered rolling over on his front to escape the glaring light. The significant drop in the level of light startled him, and he opened his eyes to find himself in what appeared to be a wooded area, with an artificial light from behind shining out into the trees. The sky overhead was awash with light pollution, and as Bruce slowly sat up, the sounds of a distant busy city filtered to his ears.

Bruce blinked as he realized the wooded area was visible only through a giant hole plowed through a painted wooden fence, and that, in all likelihood, the Hulk had left him to awaken in someone’s backyard.

“Don’t move, buddy,” a voice from behind him warned. “You have exactly one minute to give me one _hell_ of a good reason for busting through my fence before I shoot you in the kneecap and call the—”

The familiar voice turned Bruce’s head. “Uncle Morris?”

“—boys down at… wait, Bruce? Bruce, is that you?”

Cautiously turning back around, Bruce squinted against the patio light, seeing only the silhouette of a stocky man armed with a rifle of some sort. “Uncle Morris?” he repeated dumbly, vaguely recognizing the back of the house where the Walters family had moved in the early 90s. The last time he saw this backyard, it was at Jen’s high school graduation party over a dozen years ago .

“Bruce? How did you…? Never mind… Elaine! Put the phone down, it’s Bruce!”

“Bruce?” echoed a quavering voice. There was a clatter, and then Elaine Walters was shoving her husband aside as she raced out onto the patio. “Bruce!”

Barely making it to his feet before he was practically tackled by his aunt, Bruce clutched at his tattered pants with one hand and awkwardly embraced Elaine with the other arm. “Hey, Aunt Laney,” he murmured, tucking his chin over her shoulder and inhaling. Over ten years had passed since he’d last seen her, but she still smelled like vanilla and cinnamon, as though she’d just baked a fresh batch of sugar cookies. Bruce had always associated that smell with love and safety, and its presence helped quell the still-lingering traces of the Hulk.

“My god, Bruce!” Elaine pulled back, joy and confusion marking her face in equal measures. “What in the _world_ are you wearing?”

“It’s a—”

“Morris? Laney? Everything all right? We heard a crash!” came a voice from an adjacent yard, its owner hidden by the still-intact fence dividing the properties.

“It’s fine, Bill!” Morris replied, opening his shotgun and extracting the unused shells. “My nephew’s a bit of a klutz… had a little accident with the fence, that’s all. Nothing to worry about.” Gesturing with the hand holding the shotgun shells, he asked, “Can we take this reunion inside?”

Bruce laughed despite himself. Part of the reason Morris had been such a good deputy sheriff for so many years was that nothing fazed the man. That unflappability apparently extended to his half-naked nephew bursting through his backyard fence in the middle of the night, but in the more revealing light of the kitchen’s fluorescent bulbs, he could see that his aunt and uncle both looked _old_.

Which, come to think of it, they _were_. Bruce couldn’t call himself young these days, having hit his mid-forties recently and rapidly hurtling toward fifty with plenty of gray hairs to show for it. Elaine and Morris Walters had had traces of gray in their hair when Bruce last saw them, but both had gone to completely silvery-white, and lines now creased their faces. They had both been in their mid-to-late thirties when they had Jen, and Morris was probably pushing seventy by now.

Elaine leaned back against the kitchen counter and eyed Bruce up and down. “Bruce, honey, what happened to you?”

He shifted his weight self-consciously. Although he’d lost nearly all sense of body modesty thanks to the Hulk’s problem with clothes, it was a little different being half-naked in front of someone he’d known nearly all his life. “You want the long version or the short one?” he half-joked.

“Whichever one explains why you dropped off the face of the planet ten years ago,” she replied, crossing her arms over her bathrobe-clad chest, “and why you showed up _now_ , dressed like—” she waved her hand at him “— _that_.”

“And what the fence did to piss you off,” Morris added over his shoulder as he left the room. There was the sound of a door opening and closing, and he returned a moment later without shotgun or ammo, but carrying a cardigan which he tossed at Bruce.

Shrugging on the light sweater and slumping against the dining room table, Bruce rubbed at his still-aching temples and sighed. “What do you guys know about the Avengers?”

“Not much more than anyone else who watches the news,” Morris answered, “but they aren’t as popular as they used to be, what with the way they tore up big chunks of South Korea and South Africa last week. Word out of the old eastern bloc is they stopped a killer robot from destroying the world like some sort of Bond villain, but they’ve made a lot of people nervous with all that damage.”

Bruce winced, unable to remember exactly what happened in Johannesburg, but aware it was the Hulk who’d gone on a rampage immediately after the Maximoff girl got into Bruce’s brain. The subsequent days were a bit of a blur as well, but he clearly remembered Natasha’s sweetly smiling face just before she shoved him over the edge of a bottomless pit.

He wasn’t sure if he loved her or hated her for forcing the Hulk out just then. Regardless, he was plenty sure he had a lot of apologies to make to her for the way he’d behaved since the Maximoff girl messed with his head. The Natasha he made plans to run away with must have been similarly affected: she was ordinarily far too stubborn to retreat from a fight, and yet that was essentially what they’d been planning before she came to her senses in the depths of a Sokovian dungeon.

“Right,” he said at last. “The Avengers, as you know, are led by Captain America and include Iron Man, Thor, Black Widow, Hawkeye… and the Hulk. Everyone knows who Cap and Iron Man are, Thor’s an alien, Widow and Hawkeye are former SHIELD agents, and the Hulk…” He exhaled heavily, meeting his aunt’s eyes with a wry smile. “The Hulk is me.”

Morris coughed, thumping himself on the chest with a fist . “That big, green…?”

“At least he’s part of me… sort of.” Bruce ducked his head, finding it easier to explain if he didn’t try to look anyone in the eye.  “That project I was working on at Culver ten years ago? There was an accident with it, and the result was the Hulk. Any time I get angry, or scared, or hurt, I turn into a… a ‘giant green rage-monster’, as Tony Stark aptly put it once. I usually don’t remember much of what happens when he’s out, but others tell me he’s like a very large, very angry toddler throwing the world’s most destructive tantrum.”

There was a laugh, and Bruce whipped his head around to eye Elaine warily, worried he’d broken her brain. “The little monster! My word, I’d forgotten about that.”

“The little—?”

“It was what Susan called… Bruce, after your father…” Elaine shook her head and started again. “After Susan took you in, there were times when you got upset that it seemed like the ‘real’ you went away and was replaced with what she called ‘the little monster’. She said that when the ‘real’ you came back, you didn’t remember what had happened while you were ‘away’. I was taking a psychology class that semester and recognized it as a dissociative disorder—which wasn’t unusual for children who’d been through what you went through—and Susan thankfully already had you seeing a child psychologist. With time and care, you got better, of course, but I guess the little monster… Well, he’s not so little these days, is he?”

“I… I don’t remember that,” Bruce admitted, frowning. He’d deliberately tried to forget everything before he came to live with his Aunt Susan, and with good reason.

“I think we all tried to forget those days,” Elaine said, as though reading his mind. “So you’re a superhero, then?”

“Well, no, _I’m_ not, the Other Guy—the Hulk—he is… He’s an Avenger. Although, after what he did to Johannesburg, I’m not sure—”

“Captain America gave a press conference yesterday,” Morris spoke up, leaning over his forearms on the bar divider between the kitchen and living room. “He said what happened in Johannesburg wasn’t the Hulk’s fault, but that if Iron Man hadn’t been there, the damage would have been much worse. Gave a nice speech about mind control and culpability and responsibility, and what-not… dunno how many people believed him, but it sounded good.”

“Steve has a friend that…” Bruce trailed off. “Well, I don’t think ‘mind control’ is quite accurate in this case: ‘ _control_ ’ isn’t a word that applies to the Hulk.”

“You’re saying Captain America is a liar?” his uncle returned.

“Well, _no_ , I’m just saying…” He sighed, and let his shoulders drop again. “There was this woman aiding the… bad guys. Had mind control powers or something, used ‘em to get in everyone’s heads and make them see things. Not sure what most everyone else saw in theirs—Natasha told me about hers and it was _bad_ —but mine was probably the nicest. And it was really, I mean: really nice. _Too_ nice. Waking up from it, seeing the real world and realizing what all I’d lost because of the Hulk… I got mad. At the Hulk. And the Hulk, you see, comes out when I’m angry.”

Morris hummed. “So if your anger fuels an overgrown toddler with a bad temper, when you’re angry _at_ the rage monster…”

“He becomes an unstoppable wrecking ball of destruction,” Bruce finished, scrubbing a hand through his hair. “I don’t know… I… I can’t imagine why the Hulk came here. Last I knew, we were on the other side of the world facing off against an army of killer robots.”

Elaine stepped close, clasping one of his hands in both of hers. “The little monster had a nest in the bottom of Susan’s linen closet: he’d go in there, and Bruce’d come out. Susan figured it was just a place he felt safe and secure, so maybe that’s why you came here…?”

Bruce rubbed his thumb over the back of her withered hand. “Can’t really argue with that, but still: the Hulk came an awful long way for that when he could’ve easily holed up in his playroom at Avengers Tower… or did what he used to do before the Avengers and just found himself a secluded spot in the middle of nowhere. Civilization’s not really his thing, and I can’t blame him for that half the time.” He chuckled. “Hell, I think I probably just broke a dozen laws telling the two of you all this.”

His aunt drew him into a hug and kissed his cheek. “We know a good attorney,” she quipped.

Bruce’s spine stiffened. “Oh my god, Jen! I got your letter… is she okay?”

“She’s a fighter,” Morris replied. “Had a rough go of things last week, but she’s back home this week and itching to make up for lost time, though the DA’s office put her on medical leave. Never did learn the meaning of the word ‘rest’.”

“Lord, yes,” Elaine groaned. “Missed her first week of college classes on account of appendicitis, then signed up for flying lessons almost as soon as she was out of the hospital.”

“She took flying lessons?”

“Couldn’t decide what she wanted to fly more, so she ended up certifying on both small planes and helos while at UCI.” Morris shook his head. “Like I said, she’s a fighter.”

“She’s amazing,” Bruce agreed. “But she’s… okay?”

Elaine bit her lower lip. “She’s… she’d never say otherwise, Bruce, but I don’t think she’s doing that well. She took to the new diet without complaint—other than _really_ missing ice cream—but one of the medications she’s on had some pretty bad side effects, and she looks exhausted all the time.”

“No luck with the donor list, then?”

“Not so far. We were hoping you—”

Bruce’s shoulders slumped. “I can’t.”

Elaine cupped his cheeks with her hands. “I wasn’t _expecting_ you to. _Hoping_ , yes, but you’ve already done so much for her as it is.”

“It’s not that I don’t _want_ to,” he admitted, clasping her wrists gently. “I do—I _really_ do—but I _can’t_. The Hulk… my blood… I’m toxic now. Irradiated. Even a single drop of my blood is enough to make someone sick with gamma poisoning.”

Elaine’s eyes watered. “Oh, _Bruce!_ Are you… are you okay?”

“Other than turning into a giant green rage monster when I get angry, yes. Somehow, I don’t even emit any radiation as long as I’m me and my skin’s undamaged.” He gave a weak smile. “The one good thing I can definitely say about the Hulk is that I’m immune to pretty much _everything_ now.”

“Except mind control,” Morris pointed out.

“Except that,” Bruce winced. “So, uh… you said Jen was home… is she here?”

“Not for lack of trying on _my_ part,” Elaine answered, reaching up to comb Bruce’s hair off his face. “She has a house in Garden Grove, and insisted on staying by herself.” She smiled, apparently reading Bruce’s mind. “I think we’ll just have to go see her in the morning.”

*           *           *

Bruce slept soundly that night, as he often did post-Hulk, and woke up ravenous in a way even Elaine’s excellent culinary talents were hard-pressed to satisfy. After an all-too-short shower, he shaved with a spare disposable razor and accidentally nicked himself twice with the blade, which then required an embarrassed bathrobe-wearing toddle down the hall for a tube of superglue to seal the cuts and a bottle of bleach to clean the drops of his toxic blood out of the bowl of the sink.

An hour of careful sanitizing later, Bruce dressed in shabby clothes borrowed from Morris and declared himself almost-ready to face civilization again. He was much less-confident in his ability to face his sickly cousin, however, and couldn’t shake the nervous feeling in the pit of his freshly-fed stomach. Elaine called ahead to let Jen know she and Morris were on their way, and offered a conspiratorial wink at her nephew at her careful omission regarding his presence. Then they piled into Morris’s SUV and headed north on I-5 toward Garden Grove.

Traffic was fairly light, but Bruce could feel his nerves ratchet up the closer they came to Jen’s house. Oddly, there was no corresponding pressure from the Other Guy, which Bruce took to mean the Hulk had overextended himself in the last week and was less ready to come to the fore over simple anxiety. There were three whole days missing between Bruce’s last memory in Sokovia and waking in his aunt and uncle's backyard, which was the longest single span of control the Hulk had ever commanded.

And yet, even as Morris pulled into the driveway of a two-story stucco house nearly identical to all the others on the street, there wasn’t so much as a rumble from the Hulk despite the churning in Bruce’s gut. He exhaled heavily, climbed out of the SUV, and followed his aunt and uncle up the sidewalk to the front door. Elaine rang the doorbell, and Bruce hovered nervously just behind Morris as the door opened.

Jen was almost exactly as Bruce remembered her: tiny, bespectacled, and mousy. Her long brown hair had been drawn back in a messy bun, and her eyeglasses seemed to be a little too large for her thin face. If nothing else, they emphasized the dark circles under her eyes and the unnatural paleness of her skin, faded significantly from the warm olive hues of the Banner family’s Mediterranean ancestry. Dressed in baggy clothing that only further dwarfed her slender frame, she looked exactly the same as Bruce remembered her _and_ terrifyingly different.

“What brings you out on this fine Saturday mor— _Bruce?!_ ”

“Hey Jenna-Bean,” he greeted, holding his arms out and giving a soft grunt when he was tackled by 90 pounds of enthusiastic full-body hug. “Long-time no see, kid.”

“Bruce,” Jen sobbed into his shirt, “I thought you were dead!”

“Far from it,” he replied, rubbing her bony back. “Sorry I’ve been MIA for a few years… things were… a little crazy.”

Jen finally unwrapped herself from him a little and tipped her head up to look at him. “Lose a fight with a razor this morning?”

“My stubble didn’t want to give up easily,” he joked, self-consciously rubbing his chin. “I see you didn’t manage a super-late growth spurt after all.”

“Not for lack of trying,” she smiled, shoving her glasses back up on her nose with a quick push of a single finger. “I tried just about everything short of volunteering for a mad scientist’s project.”

Bruce winced. “Yeah, I definitely don’t recommend that route.”

Jen rolled her eyes. “I _meant_ like Captain America. And let me tell you how weird it is having your favorite childhood superhero come to life to fight aliens in New York, shadow governments in D.C., and evil robots in Europe. I mean, _wild!_ ”

“Yeah, it’s something,” he agreed. He’d long ago forgotten Jen’s childhood obsession with Morris’s incomplete collection of vintage Captain America comic books, but his brain was now busy connecting parallels. Frail body, poor health, and over-sized sense of justice and fairness, there were many similarities between Jen and what Bruce knew of Steve Rogers before the super soldier serum.

If he could get Steve to come visit Jen, it would probably make her century.

“Alright gang, inside,” Jen announced, releasing her hold on Bruce with only one arm, and pivoting around so that her other arm slid across his back and tucked her small frame into his side. “Anybody need anything to drink? Water, juice, tea?”

“I’m good for now,” Bruce declined, wrapping his own arm around his cousin’s shoulders and squeezing her gently against his flank. “Actually, a water would probably be good if I’m gonna give you the low-down on where I’ve been the last several years.”

“Or beer,” Morris chimed in gruffly, holding the front door open. “Or something stronger.”

“You don’t drink, Dad,” Jen sighed.

“I could learn to.”

She rolled her eyes again, turning her body slightly to the side so that she and Bruce could step through the front door without letting go of one another. “It can’t be _that_ bad.”

Bruce had only a moment to admire the high, vaulted ceiling of the foyer before the world flared white.

*           *           *

When next he could see or move, Bruce found himself lying on the carpeted floor of what appeared to be a modest but modern-looking living room, with the members of the Walters family all peering at him with expectant expressions on their faces.

“Whu…” he tried, his mouth feeling like it had been packed with cotton balls. “What happened?”

“Well,” began Jen, sitting primly on a suede-covered ottoman, “we just had a chat with a friend of yours.”

“A friend?” Bruce frowned, looking around for his glasses, only to realize that a) he’d left his spare pair in New York before heading off to Sokovia to spring Natasha from her cell, and b) his newly-borrowed t-shirt was in tatters, though the sweatpants had stretched enough to survive. “Oh, _no_.”

“It was a nice chat,” she assured him. “Hulk’s surprisingly articulate for a—what did he call himself?”

“Giant green rage monster,” Elaine supplied helpfully. “I’ll give him ‘giant’ and ‘green’, but I think he's being too hard on himself for the others.”

Bruce clutched at his head, tugging lightly on his hair to try to clear his muzzy brain. “The Hulk?”

“He prefers to be called Joe, actually,” Jen replied, then grinned. “I’m kidding! Well, only about the ‘Joe’ part. Dad barely had the front door closed behind us before your roommate showed up and wanted to talk.”

“Hulk doesn’t talk.”

“Where does an 800-pound gorilla sit? Anywhere he wants. Hulk doesn’t do a lot of things Hulk doesn’t want to do, apparently,” his cousin countered, “but he _does_ talk, and he wanted to make sure you had a chance to listen, too.” She held up her cell phone, making a show of plugging it into a cable connected to her TV, then triumphantly pushed a button on her phone’s screen.

The image on the TV wobbled around sickeningly for a moment before settling on the Hulk, sitting cross-legged on the floor of the very living room where Bruce now sat. “All right, big guy, we’re recording this now. Here, Dad, you can do the honors,” Jen’s voice came from behind the camera.

“Your mother’s better with these things than I am,” Morris answered gruffly, also off-screen. Nevertheless, the camera wobbled again as it apparently changed hands, with Jen now visible on the right edge of the frame.

“Mom’s a little… shaky at the moment,” Jen replied. “Nothing ever shakes _you_.”

“I’ll be fine,” came Elaine’s voice, and the camera panned to the right to find her draped across one end of the sofa. “I’m just… surprised.”

“Sorry,” rumbled a deep voice, and the camera panned back around to catch the Hulk looking… contrite?

“You’re… well, you’re pretty surprising, dude,” Jen said with a grin, hugging a throw pillow tightly as she practically bounced onto the ottoman near the center of the frame. “Always knew my cuz was a superhero!”

The Hulk snorted. “Puny Banner stupid.”

“Aw, don’t be like that, Hulk… Bruce is a really smart guy.”

“Banner book smart,” the Hulk admitted, then added, “still stupid.” The big guy’s brow furrowed deeply. “Runs away… when heart hurts.”

“He’s had a lot of bad things happen to him, honey,” Elaine soothed, sitting up and leaning in just at the edge of the frame. “It’s his way of coping, sometimes.”

“Hurts others,” the Hulk grumbled, “hurt Spider.”

Jen frowned. “Spider?”

“Black Spider.”

It took a moment, and then Jen’s face brightened. “Oh! You mean Black Widow!”

The Hulk grunted. “Hurt Spider. Hurt Betty. Hurt Jen.”

“He didn’t hurt me, Hulk.”

The look on the big guy’s face showed his disbelief. “Banner ran away. Not give Jen piece of Banner.”

“It’s not that he doesn’t _want_ to,” Elaine replied, holding her hands out to both Jen and the Hulk, “it’s that he _can’t_. He said his… _your_ blood is toxic, Hulk: if he—uh, the two of you gave Jen a kidney, the radiation in your blood would _kill_ her.”

“Hulk not hurt family.”

“Bruce was adamant it wouldn’t work,” Morris chimed in from behind the camera, “and I reckon he’s smart enough to know that for sure.”

“Hulk not stupid!” the big guy growled. “Jen like tiny Smash Man, not scared like Banner. Jen safe with Hulk.” He thumped the floor with his fist. “Jen family. Hulk not hurt family.” His expression softened. “Hulk not like to hurt people… Hulk want Jen safe. Hulk not let Banner run away ‘til after.” He slumped, then toppled over on his side. “Say ‘bye to Spider… and Red Metal and Smash Man… and Birdie and even Punchy.”

And just like that, the Hulk closed his eyes, flopped over onto his back, and then shrank down into Bruce’s normal size. The image shook as Morris jostled the phone, then went back to the first frame of the video with a “play” symbol hovering in the center of the screen.

“Red Metal must be Iron Man,” Bruce surmised, having stood during the video only to begin pacing the floor the moment it ended. “Birdie’s probably Hawkeye. Punchy and Smash Man have to be the Captain and Thor, but I’m not sure which is which.”

“ _That’s_ what you’re focusing on?” Jen exclaimed, incredulous. “Hulk’s right: you _are_ stupid.”

“Jen!” Elaine admonished.

“Gotta go with my girl on this one, Laney,” Morris agreed. “I think you’re missing the forest for the trees, Bruce.”

“There’s _no way_ my blood is safe!” Bruce exclaimed. “The Hulk doesn’t get how _dangerous_ gamma radiation is to others because he’s— _we’re_ immune.” He scrubbed a hand through his hair. “When the SHIELD dump hit the ‘net, Tony pulled everything he could on the Avengers and our personal contacts: my file included a trace SHIELD ran on me several years back where a _single drop_ of my blood ended up putting an old man in the hospital with acute radiation poisoning… he almost _died_ because of me, because of _one drop_ of my blood. But an entire _kidney?!_ You’d die in _seconds_ , Jen!”

“I’m dying anyway!” Jen shouted.

Elaine sighed. “Now, honey, don’t be so overdramatic—”

“The doctor gave me about three, maybe four months before both of my kidneys quit entirely,” Jen continued, standing up straight and clutching a pillow to her abdomen with the same ferocity she had in the video. “The cholesterol meds which were supposed to make my blood easier to process ended up trashing my muscles instead, dumping a crap-ton more protein into my kidneys just to make things _worse_. I’m looking at _maybe_ another six to nine months after that before my heart or other internal organs give out, so I’ve decided to quit dialysis as soon as I get my affairs in order.”

Clutching the pillow tightly again, Jen cast her gaze at the floor. “I spent yesterday morning updating my will and the afternoon buried in a tub of ice cream. I mean why the heck not: it won’t kill me any faster.” She looked up again, her face contorted into a bitter smile. “Though I guess I need to update my will again now that I know _you’re_ still alive, Bruce.”

Bruce swallowed thickly, glancing at Elaine and Morris to see his own horror reflected on the faces of Jen’s parents. Morris had moved to his wife’s side to help support her as she swayed on her feet, but he also looked suddenly far too old and frail.

“There might be a chance… a small one, maybe, but a chance,” Bruce hedged. “A colleague of mine is a pioneer in tissue regeneration. She may be able to help.”

“Can she clone me new kidneys?”

“Well, not yet, but she’s working on that sort of thing.”

“‘Working on’, huh? Like ten to fifteen years ‘til clinical trials? I don’t have that kind of time left, Bruce.”

He grimaced. “More like three to five years.”

She shook her head. “I don’t have _that_ much time, either.”

Anger rose in his chest, and for once, he was glad to let it out. “What _else_ am I supposed to do?!” he shouted.

“Maybe try listening to your alter-ego?!” she shouted back. Spiking her pillow off the ottoman, Jen stalked across the room and put all five-feet-two-inches of her fury in Bruce’s face. “Because _maybe_ if the Hulk’s the reason why your face no longer looks like the victim of a rogue blender attack, then _maybe_ his blood will help with some of my other health problems!”

Bruce reflexively brushed his fingertips over his chin, unsurprised to discover that the Hulk’s transformation had caused the superglue to flake off, leaving unmarred skin behind where he’d cut himself shaving. “Injuries only heal that fast when I Hulk-out, which let me tell you, is one _hell_ of a side-effect.”

“A big green friend under my skin? I think I can handle that side-effect.”

“You’d be lucky if _that_ was the worst that happened,” he snapped, nostrils flaring in anger. The Hulk, having already said his piece, didn’t so much as stir. “You know how many people have ever survived taking a variant of the super soldier serum? Of the dozens of people who’ve tried in the last seventy years, very few survived, and most of _those_ ended up as monsters or with debilitating impairments like muscle deterioration or profound memory loss.”

“I’m willing to take that risk, Bruce!”

“I’m not! God, Jen, if my blood turned you into something like… like the Red Skull, I could _never_ live with myself for what I’d done to you.”

Jen crossed her arms over her chest. “And what if I end up turning into something more like Captain America? Would that be so bad?”

“That would be _great_ , Jen, but the odds are so, _so_ far against it. It’s a huge risk. My colleague, Doctor Cho—”

“Actually,” Morris interrupted, “Hulk didn’t think it was. He said it himself: Jen—with all her illnesses, stubbornness, and compassion for others—is ‘like tiny Smash Man’.” He folded his arms over his own chest, mirroring Jen’s pose. “He thinks she’s like Steve Rogers was before he became Captain America. He thinks it’ll _work._ ”

Bruce shook his head, backing away. “No… you don’t know what you’re asking. It won’t work… it _can’t_.” He spun on his heel, prepared to make a break for the front door, only to find himself suddenly face-down on the floor, head turned toward the TV and its freeze-frame on the Hulk. “I don’t believe this,” he mumbled into the carpet.

Elaine crouched next to him, gingerly touching his shoulder. “Bruce, honey… are you okay?”

Suddenly, the whole situation was just too much, and he began to laugh, pressing his face further into the short pile and just letting go. He laughed until his face and the carpet were both soaked with tears, and he laughed until his sides ached and every breath came as a shuddering gasp. When he didn’t think he could laugh any more, he pitched his voice as low as he could and recited, “‘Hulk not let Banner run away ‘til after’.” That sent him into a fresh peal of laughter.

Finally, ribs sore and lungs burning, he managed to sit up, scrubbing at the moisture on his face. “You really wanna do this?” he asked Jen, who once again seated on her ottoman and hugging her pillow.

“I can’t exactly _force_ you to—”

“Not what I asked. Do you want this? Even if you end up with your own giant green rage monster or, I dunno, blue scales and a forked tongue? Even if it _kills_ you?”

Jen release her death grip on the pillow and sat up straight. “It might be the only chance I have left,” she answered solemnly. “I _have_ to try. I _want_ to try.”

Bruce turned to Elaine and Morris. “And the two of you… you’re okay with this?”

Elaine shook her head. “It’s… there _have_ to be other options.”

Morris put his arms around his wife, pulling her into his side. “Maybe there are, maybe there aren’t. We’ve gotten Jenny this far, but she’s a grown woman now. This is _her_ risk to take.”

Bruce nodded. “So it’s settled then: three are ‘for’, two ‘against’.”

“Three?”

He smiled wryly. “I think Hulk’s made it pretty clear his opinion on the matter. But if we’re going to do this, we’re going to need a medical team we can trust, a secure surgical theater, hazmat containment with an on-site incinerator, and some _seriously_ strong tranquilizers in case anything goes wrong.”

Bruce looked up, meeting the gazes of his cousin, aunt, and uncle in turn. “We’re gonna need the Avengers.”

*           *           *

It didn’t take long to set Jen’s laptop up with a copy of the cornily-named video chat software used by Stark Industries employees and the Avengers. The software had three layers of encryption, with the first protecting a video stream from RedTube, in case prying eyes tried to decrypt the signal; Tony liked the mental image of his rival companies finding only cheap porn if they tried to eavesdrop on his systems. The second layer protected only a carrier wave with timed bursts of static; if one were to count the seconds of each alternating static burst and period of silence, they’d discover the carrier wave was broadcasting the first million digits of _pi_ on repeat.

The final layer of encryption, of course, protected the actual chat connection. Bruce hesitated a few seconds over the “connect” button, then steeled himself for the conversation ahead and clicked the mouse.

“Thank you for using Stark Expression,” began an unfamiliar female voice. “Please state your name and that of the person or persons whom you wish to call.”

It took him a moment to remember that JARVIS was no longer in charge of SI’s systems, and that Tony must have loaded one of his backup AIs onto the mainframe. Bruce didn’t remember one with an Irish accent, though, but they’d prepared over a dozen of them for various Iron Legion roles. “Uh, Bruce Banner, calling for Tony Stark.”

“Welcome, Doctor Banner. I am to inform you that Tony has promised to ‘kick your green ass to the moon’ the next time he sees you. Please wait a moment while your call is connected.”

Bruce groaned, rubbing his hands through his hair and grateful he’d closed Jen’s office door behind him. This conversation was going to be hard enough without an audience.

The connection opened into Tony’s private lab at Avengers Tower, with the tower’s owner spinning lazily in a desk chair at the center of the room. “Long time no talk-to, Green Bean,” Tony began not even bothering to look down from the ceiling as he spoke. “I think the last place I’d have thought to look for you was in L.A., so kudos for being unpredictable.”

“It’s the last place I’d have gone, too,” Bruce agreed, “but it wasn’t exactly my idea. This was all Hulk.”

“Well, that’s odd… I thought he hated cities. And people. And cities full of… people.” Tony stopped the chair, standing up and striding over to the screen. “By the way, I am _so_ going to kick your ass for running off like that.”

“Yeah, your new assistant warned me about that. Which one of the Legion AIs is that, by the way? I didn’t recognize the voice.”

“Friday. I made her special for the search and rescue model that Pepper stole for herself. She preferred JARVIS, though, so I shelved Friday until… well, I guess Pep’s going to need a different AI for the Rescue armor now.” Tony smirked. “Actually, I kinda built Friday for _you_ … she sings.”

Bruce groaned, resisting the urge to beat his head against the desk. “Lemme guess: she sounds just like Enya.”

“Give the man a cigar! Or is that too much for your blood pressure? Better play some relaxing Celtic—”

“I need a favor,” Bruce interrupted. “Several favors, actually.”

Tony pointed a screwdriver at the screen threateningly. “You’re kinda short on credit right now, big guy. You ran out in the middle of _the_ biggest throwdown since Loki’s invasion. I’m pretty sure that’s against the Bro Code. Friday, is that against the Bro Code?”

“As I am not a ‘bro’, I will have to defer to your judgment on that, Boss,” the AI replied.

“That’s probably a ‘yes’,” Tony decided. “All right, what’s shakin’ bacon? And does it have anything to do with you being in… Garden Grove? Seriously? Of all the places in Orange County, you couldn’t at least spring for Newport Beach?”

“It’s a little outside my cousin’s pay grade,” Bruce sighed, “which is the reason for my call—”

“Done. SI’s always needing good attorneys for the legal team, especially after ‘Natalie Rushman’ scared half of them away, and about half of the ones that stayed turned out to be on HYDRA’s payroll.”

Bruce rolled his eyes. “Why am I not surprised you know what my cousin does for a living? _I_ didn’t know what she did for a living until last week.”

“Kinda my thing, Fiona; I gotta keep my eyes on all the variables. How’s the cuz doing?”

Bruce inhaled deeply through his nose, then exhaled slowly out his mouth. “She’s dying.”

Tony froze. “Sorry to hear that. What do you need? Doctors? Medicine?”

“Doctors, yes, but only ones we can absolutely trust. Helen, if she’s up for it, plus whoever else you can recommend who has an airtight non-disclosure agreement. We’ll need at least two surgeons, an anesthesiologist, nurses, a sterile medical bay, and full hazmat gear, incinerators, the works.”

“She’s contagious?”

“The hazmat stuff’s for me: I’m going to give Jen one of my kidneys.”

Tony took a step back. “Whoa! Is that even _safe?_ ”

“Well, _I_ certainly don’t think so, but Hulk’s refusing to let me leave without giving it a shot.”

The inventor was scrolling through information on a side display, reading aloud, “Leukemia, arrhythmia, endometriosis… Lyme disease? Seriously? I haven’t seen a medical history this sorry since I donated my dad’s copy of Cap’s enlistment records to the Smithsonian.”

“Funny, that’s what Hulk said, too. Well, not in so many words: ‘Jen like tiny Smash Man’, I think it was.”

“Wait, you and Jolly Green are on speaking terms now?”

“Not exactly? He apparently asked Jen to take video to show me when I woke up. Even in all the hours of training footage I’ve watched, I’ve never heard him say even half what he did in this one short video.”

“And he basically said he wants you to donate a kidney to your cousin?”

“He’s convinced my blood won’t hurt her because she’s family. The science doesn’t quite agree with that, but Jen wants to give it a shot. She’s… she doesn’t have a whole lot of options, really. The donor list hasn’t pulled any matches so far and she’s had a hard time with some of her medication. She was planning to quit dialysis soon and just give up.”

“Well, _that_ doesn’t sound a thing like Cap. I can’t imagine him ever…” Tony trailed off, shuddering. “Nope, not going there. Where do you want the surgery and how soon? Helen’s still recovering from the smackdown Ultron laid on her, but she’ll probably be back on her feet in a few weeks. Aside from her, there’s Doctor Wu, the guy who did my heart surgery.”

“If you trusted him enough to take shrapnel out of your chest and replace the arc reactor with an artificial sternum, that’s good enough for me,” Bruce agreed.

“Yeah, he came highly recommended by my first cardiac surgeon,” Tony replied with a quirk to his lips. “Anywho, we can probably get a surgical center set up nearby—SI’s already working on something for the Foundation that will fit the bill—and fly Doctor Wu in to oversee it. Probably ought to have legal throw together some NDAs for your aunt and uncle—I _presume_ they’ll want to be involved—plus the usual waivers and what-not.”

Bruce nodded. “You should probably send out a supply of dendrotoxin, too, just to be on the safe side. I know this operation’s the Hulk’s idea, but if he objects to me being cut open…”

“Want me to send Rhodey, too, in case the big guy wants to hit someone?”

“Thor would be better.”

“Thor’s gone to visit his girlfriend in… wherever the heck she is this week.”

“Austria, I think.”

Tony shrugged. “Beats me, but Fix-It Felix took his magic hammer and amscrayed. Oh, and I’m retired. Again. Sweet-talked the Air Force into letting Rhodey officially represent the US Armed Forces on the Avengers. Even though it means he’s a colonel who’ll be answering to a captain, he’s cool with that since it’s Captain _America_. Vision’s definitely in, and Falcon’s decided to quit his weekend-warrior thing and join full-time. Spooky’s considering it, but Birdbrain’s out; smart money’s on him lasting only until a few months after Thing 3 is born, though.”

Bruce blinked. “Spooky?”

“The not-so-wicked witch of Novi Grad.”

“Wanda? What about her brother?”

Tony’s expression fell. “He didn’t make it out of the city. Saved Barton and some local kid from Ultron, but took a chest full of large-caliber bullets in the process. Spooky’s… not handling it all that well, really. Probably thinks joining the team will keep her busy enough to not think about it, but if _anyone_ knows how well ‘not thinking about it’ works… Well, let’s just say she’d be in _really_ good company.”

“And Natasha?” Bruce asked softly.

“Still on the team, if that’s what you’re wondering." Tony held his hands up in mock-surrender. “Anything beyond that, you’re gonna have to ask her yourself.”’

“Pretty pissed off at me, huh?”

“Not outwardly, but you never know with her.” He pursed his lips, then added, “And she scares me too much to try finding out. Like I said, you’re gonna have to ask her yourself.”

“Guess I’ll have to do that… She’d probably be the biggest help at keeping this whole operation on the down-low.”

“You want to keep it a secret?”

Bruce nodded. “If this works… I don’t care what Hulk says, Jen’s _not_ going to make it out of this unchanged. _My blood_ turned Blonsky and Stern into deformed monsters; I don’t want to think about what Jen’s going to become from an entire _kidney_. But, if by some strange miracle she turns out to be just hiding a big green secret under her skin, then I don’t want AIM or the DOD or anyone else to get wind of it and go after her like they do me.”

“And if the change is more obvious?”

“Then she goes _with_ me. Hulk and I… well, we may not agree on much, but we’re both tired of hurting people.” Bruce inhaled deeply. “We’re gonna find some way to go off the grid for good, and that _includes_ off SHIELD’s radar. Fury’s not going to like it, but he can kiss my big green ass.”

Tony laughed. “Friday? Save that as my new ringtone.”

“Done, Boss, and I improved it with some discrete editing,” Friday replied, and then played the recording: “ _Fury can kiss my big green ass_.”

“Perfect!” Tony chortled, rubbing his palms together gleefully. “So… Friday and I will hash out a few possible scenarios for your mobile hospital needs while you and Jessica Rabbit talk about your relationship issues. I won’t make any definite plans until she gives the go-ahead, but after that, we should be looking at a week or so to get everything together. Anything faster than that might raise a few blips on Fury’s radar.”

“The sooner the better, but a week or more is fine. It’s been over ten years since I spent any time with Jen, so it’s long overdue.”

“Speaking of overdue,” the inventor began, “your chat with the Red Scare? Starts now.”

The computer’s speakers pinged. “Incoming call from Natasha Romanov,” Friday informed him.

Bruce groaned. “Thanks, Tony.”

“Hope you survive!”

The connection to Tony’s lab closed, leaving only the call notification screen. Exhaling deeply, Bruce clicked the “accept” button. “Hey,” he said by way of greeting.

Natasha looked… well, no different than almost any other time he’d seen her, which unfortunately told him absolutely nothing about her present state of mind. “Hey, yourself. Wish you were here.”

“So you could kick my ass like Tony’s threatening to do?”

“Not really… kinda hard to be mad at you when I’m just as much to blame as anyone.”

“Natasha—”

“I mean, I _am_ the one who broke your trust—and Hulk’s—by shoving the two of you into a giant pit.”

“Yeah? Well, as I remember it, I was trying to be a big dumb coward and trying to get you to run away from a fight… run away with _me_.”

A small smile graced her lips. “I won’t say it wasn’t tempting.”

“But that’s not _you_! I may not know you as well as Rogers and Barton do, but I know you well enough to know you don’t back down from a fight. Find another way around it maybe, but run away? That’s not you.”

“It’s not me,” she agreed, “and I’m sorry to say it took getting stuck in a dank, dark cell while Stark’s ego on steroids ranted at me to figure that out.”

“Well, at least you figured it out before I did.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself… you had other things on your mind up ‘til then. I hear you, Stark, Thor, and Ultron are all Vision’s daddies—”

Bruce choked. “No, that’s… no, that’s too weird. Don’t say that _ever_ again. Please?”

“—And Helen’s his mommy. And you’re right: that _is_ too weird.” Her mouth did that half-smirking smile again. “He doesn’t look a thing like _any_ of you.”

“You’re a horrible person,” he joked, then sobered as he recalled the night they’d spent together at Barton’s farm and the personal stories and nightmares they’d shared with one another. “No, sorry, that was—”

“No, I get it,” she interrupted, crossing her arms on the edge of the desk in front of her and hunching over them a little. “And I can even admit that I _used_ to be a horrible person, but I’ve been trying… I’ve been trying so, so much, that at times I actually think I might not be a horrible person after all.”

“You’re not. I was only kidding.”

“I wasn’t.” She sighed heavily. “I wasn’t entirely in my right mind after Wanda’s little trick… none of us were, really. Well, Clint was fine, but then he got her with a shock arrow before she could scramble his brains any more than they usually are. Even Steve and Thor were affected, and Wanda admitted she zapped Stark’s brain when he was by himself in Strucker’s lair. As she explained it, she was looking for and amplifying our weaknesses. We _all_ weren’t ourselves at one point or another… or rather we _were_ ourselves, just a part of ourselves most of us keep hidden.”

Bruce shook his head. “I let my fear get the best of me, which while I can’t say doesn’t happen often, recent evidence suggests it _does_ more often than I’d like.”

“I don’t think it was fear,” Natasha countered. “I think the part of you that came out in all this was, well, _greed_.”

“Excuse me?”

She sat back in her chair. “You told me about your dream that night at Clint’s, and I told you about mine, and now the rest of us have all been comparing notes—well, Steve, Wanda, and I have been, and Vision’s been _incredibly_ insightful for someone less than a week old—and we’ve started figuring out what each of us actually experienced.

“Stark’s dream was about failing everyone, about not doing enough to stop horrible things from happening. Stark’s a lot of things, but an underachiever is not one of them; if anything, he’s likely to go overboard. Stark’s weakness was his fear of failure: of never doing or _being_ enough. Wanda’s powers put that part of him into overdrive.”

Bruce nodded. “That explains why he was so desperate to restart the Ultron project when we got back: he was afraid we hadn’t done enough yet to safeguard the world from alien invasion.”

“It makes sense,” Natasha agreed. “Now, Thor’s was a lot harder to piece together—especially since he wasn’t there to fill in the gaps of what Wanda remembered—but it was a lot like Tony’s. In Thor’s case, it was his own pride causing him to fail his sworn duty and to honor his promises to us and to Asgard. _He’s_ the one that got the cowardice dream, not you, and it drove him away while he tried to figure out what he’d missed.”

“Then there’s Steve’s dream,” she sighed, “and it’s probably the saddest of anyone’s: he was at a USO dance in 1945, after the war was over. Wanda couldn’t make any sense of it—couldn’t find out why it was a weakness or how he could be manipulated by it—and Steve wasn’t particularly forthcoming about what he thought it meant. It was Vision that figured it out: Steve thinks his only worth is in a fight.”

Bruce frowned. “He thinks he’s useless outside of one?”

“That’s about the gist of it,” Natasha confirmed. “Then Wilson jumped in and pointed out he’d once asked Steve to identify what made him happy, and the guy couldn’t think of anything. That’s just _sad_ , Bruce, even _I_ can think of things that make _me_ happy.”

“I take it someone’s taking steps to help Cap find his happy place?”

“Well, we all agree bringing in Barnes would help a lot, but there’s also been talk of getting him a pet or a new hobby.” She shrugged. “Or an old hobby, like art. Turns out our Captain used to be quite the artist before he joined the Army, but has barely touched a sketchbook since he was defrosted. Stark bought out half of Blick’s when he found out Steve hadn’t been drawing.”

“And there goes Tony, going overboard again.”

“But in a _good_ way this time. So anyway, that was Steve’s problem: never allowing himself to stand down or call it quits, even when he probably _should_.”

Bruce smiled sadly. “If _anyone_ deserves a break, it’s him.”

“He’ll be taking one, in a way. He’s agreed to take command of a new training facility, where we’ll be rebuilding SHIELD in the image the founders originally intended. Fury left us a lot of pieces to work with, and there are still small teams of loyal SHIELD agents out there that could use the backup. ‘Commander Rogers’ has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”

“Doesn’t sound like much of a break to me,” he admitted.

“He seems to be looking forward to it, though, so there’s that.” She drew in a breath. “So next, we have _my_ dream: the Red Room and my ‘graduation ceremony’. I thought it was about what they did to me… but it wasn’t, not exactly.” She cocked her head to the side. “Mine wasn’t about making _bad_ choices so much as it was about actually _making_ them.”

“I don’t understand,” Bruce frowned. "From what you told me of it, you didn’t exactly _have_ a choice.”

“No, I didn’t,” she replied with a sad smile, shaking her head. “I was trained to let others make my decisions for me: the Red Room and my KGB handlers, which later got passed on to SHIELD and even our captain. Oh, I make lots of _little_ decisions every day—what to wear, where to eat, who to flirt with…”

“Besides everyone?” he joked.

Natasha’s lips twisted in another smirking smile. “Naturally. But again, that’s all little stuff: things that don’t really mean anything.” She crossed her arms in front of herself again. “Laura’s pregnancy had me thinking about my own choices in life, and whether or not I could try for the ‘total package’ like what Clint has: missions when he’s needed, but home with his family when he’s not. Having children of my own was a choice the Red Room took from me, but that’s not to say I couldn’t still settle down and adopt a few rugrats.”

“You were trying to make new choices for yourself?”

She shook her head. “No offense, Bruce, but that ‘happy families’ scenario? It’s not me. It was what _you_ seemed to want, and I was happy to go along with it at the time because I misunderstood what the dream was showing me: I’m always letting others make choices _for_ me.”

Bruce winced. “Sorry.”

“Well, it’s not like you were in a position to have known. That part of me I thought was gone forever when I made the choice to take Clint’s offer to join SHIELD? Turns out, I haven’t really been doing a good job of making my own choices since then, and Wanda made that… apathy, you could say, stronger than ever.

“But Steve’s really the one who called it, though he beat around the bush so much Wilson had to translate for him: I avoid taking responsibility for my own actions. If I didn’t make the choice, I could always blame someone else for any of the consequences. I did it to Steve several times when we were working for SHIELD, going behind his back on Fury’s orders even though it jeopardized his mission. I could always justify it to him—and to myself—that I was on a separate, related mission.”

“The ‘just following orders’ defense.”

“Yup,” she answered, popping the “p”.

“You know they didn’t find that an adequate defense at Nuremberg.”

“Yup,” she repeated. “Needless to say, there’s no more running for Natasha Romanov.”

Bruce nodded, chest aching a little, but somehow relieved. “So what’s _next_ for Natasha Romanov? Tony said you were staying with the Avengers.”

She nodded, a genuine smile lighting her face. “My choice, in case you were wondering. I thought long and hard about what I wanted most, and the truth is, this kind of thing? Even running for my life from HYDRA or horribly outnumbered by Chitauri, I don’t think I’ve ever been more… well, not ‘happy’, exactly, but ‘content’, I guess. It’s what I’m good at, I can _do_ good, and more importantly, I feel like I belong. And Steve trusts me, weird as that sounds when I say it out loud. It also means no more masks, which I have to admit terrifies me a little.”

“You’re so much braver than you give yourself credit for,” Bruce blurted, then flushed. “I mean, I’ve always thought that about you. Hulk terrified you, but you still learned not only how to work with him, but how to calm him down.”

“You’re brave too, Bruce, even though I know you don’t think so. And like I said, I don’t think your dream was about fear at all, but about greed… at least a small amount of it, anyway. You normally don’t allow yourself to have the things you want.”

“I _can’t_ have the things I want,” he corrected. “I’m… Hulk… we’re too dangerous.”

“Dangerous to whom? To people who threaten you? Absolutely. To the people closest to you? Not a chance.” She squared her shoulders. “You need to make peace with the big guy, Bruce, because I think the two of you want a lot of the same things, you’re just too busy being mad at each other to see it, and I think that’s what set him off at Johannesburg.”

Bruce sat back in his chair and rubbed at his temples. “Well, at the moment, he’s holding me hostage until I donate a kidney to my cousin.”

Natasha stared, brow furrowing in confusion. “He’s what?”

“No joke: he’s holding me hostage for a kidney. Before the mission to Strucker’s base, I received a letter from my Aunt Elaine, which had apparently been sent to Culver and then bounced all over before somehow ending up in Maria Hill’s hands almost a year after it was sent. In it, my aunt explained that my cousin Jen was in need of a kidney transplant, and since I had previously donated bone marrow and platelets to her in the past, I was an ideal donor candidate.”

“Except for your tendency to turn green,” Natasha joked.

“Except for that… only Hulk is convinced that’s not a problem. I remember only a few flashes from the fight in Sokovia, but my next clear memory was waking up in the backyard of my aunt and uncle’s place near here. I explained the situation to them—probably breaking a dozen NDAs and laws in the process—so that they’d understand why I couldn’t help Jen. Of course, I couldn’t go all that way and _not_ see my cousin, so I made plans to visit her the next day. When I got there, Hulk decided to show up and tell everyone it _would_ work.”

“Wow. He’s usually not very articulate.”

“I know, I’ve seen the training videos. But apparently he asked Jen to record a video so I could see for myself.”

The former spy smiled. “And clearly, it made him more ‘real’ to you since you’re now referring to him as ‘Hulk’ and not ‘ _the_ Hulk’ or ‘the Other Guy’.”

“I… didn’t notice that,” Bruce admitted, eyes widening in surprise. “They had me watch the video so I could see for myself that Hulk had made his wishes clear, even though the science says Jen’s probably going to _die_ in the attempt. I… didn’t take it all that well and tried to run out of the house, only to black out and find myself facing back the way I’d come. He—Hulk—wouldn’t let me leave.”

“Wow,” Natasha repeated. “I need to see this video for myself.”

“I’ll send it to you later,” he promised. “But anyway, that’s the other reason why I called: I need help arranging the surgery _and_ keeping it a secret.”

“I take it you and Stark already discussed the logistics?”

“Well, I wanted Doctor Cho, but she won’t be recovered for a while yet, so Tony named the guy who did his heart surgery.”

“Doctor Wu, chief cardiologist at Matilda Hospital in Hong Kong; Stark had me vet the guy pretty thoroughly before he had the arc reactor removed. Of course, we didn’t know about HYDRA then, but he didn’t turn up in any of the SHIELD dump files.”

“Yeah, that’s the one, though we’ll probably need at least one more surgeon.”

“Doctor Fine, SHIELD trauma surgeon… he’s the guy that kept Fury alive after the assassination attempt. He can probably recommend an anesthesiologist and a nurse or two for the rest.”

Bruce shook his head. “I can’t let word of this get back to Fury or anyone else. If Jen makes it out of this surgery alive, I don’t want her to be hounded like I was.”

Natasha nodded. “Fair enough. I’ll see what I can do.”

“Tony’s already started putting together a plan,” Friday chimed in. “I’m sending both of you access to the project files.”

“I assume the time frame is ‘as soon as possible’?”

“The longer I’m here, the more likely it is that I’m spotted,” Bruce agreed. “There are cameras _everywhere_.”

“I’d send you a nano mask, but the last one we had finished ended up getting busted up by some SHIELD agents during a fight with HYDRA operatives. There’s always backshine cream: it’s a facial moisturizer containing nano particles that don’t interfere with normal human vision under most conditions, but digital recordings get a lens flare worse than a J. J. Abrams movie.”

Bruce laughed and shook his head. “I think I’ll just stay indoors and away from public spaces. Catch up with my cousin, help my uncle rebuild the fence Hulk busted through… that sort of thing.”

“Portable EM scrambler? Works on recording devices within only 50 meters, but—”

“Natasha!” he protested, garnering a laugh from the former spy.

“Just trying to help, Bruce, you know that.”

He smiled warmly at her then, feeling incredibly blessed to have had the friendship and affection of this marvelous woman. “So… are we good?”

“We’re good,” she agreed, sobering. “I don’t think either of us is in a place right now to be in any kind of relationship. How about we each find out who we are separately, and decide again later if we want to give things a try?”

“Sounds like a plan,” Bruce replied with a heartfelt smile.

*           *           *

When they put their metaphorical heads together, Tony, Natasha, and Friday were terrifyingly efficient, especially once Vision joined in, armed with his memories and experience as JARVIS. Doctor Wu received an invitation to a week-long forum at the Cleveland Clinic, but found himself stranded in L.A. after a mix-up with his connecting flight. The problem would take approximately 48 hours to resolve, during which he’d be the honored guest of Stark Industries, and he would get on his way having missed only the first day of the conference.

Meanwhile, Stark Industries would be testing out a new portable surgical unit capable of being transported almost anywhere in the world. It would get a shake-down run in the Mojave Desert before being airlifted to the Maria Stark Foundation office in Gulmira to be ready for emergency deployment. At the same time, Doctor Fine and his hand-picked surgical team—all of whom had been sworn to secrecy—would be meeting Captain America and Black Widow in Las Vegas to discuss transferring permanently to the new Avengers facility in upstate New York.

As for Bruce and the Walters family, they needed only climb in Morris’s SUV and follow directions from Friday via the Starkphone mailed to Jen’s address. In true Tony Stark fashion, all of the non-disclosure and waiver paperwork had been delivered and signed electronically, leaving no literal paper trail of the proceedings.

On a sunny Saturday afternoon only two weeks after he’d crashed through his aunt and uncle’s fence, Bruce found himself sitting inside an experimental mobile hospital unit in the Mojave Desert, surrounded by a bustling medical team as they prepared for the impending surgery. Jen had made several undignified noises for a woman her age after being introduced to Captain America, but was now lying down on one of the tables in the bay, holding Elaine’s hand and speaking quietly. Morris was having an equally quiet conversation with Steve Rogers at the end of the room, and from the hand gestures being displayed, they were discussing this season’s prospects for the Dodgers.

“You ready for this?” Natasha asked softly, coming to stand at the edge of the surgical table Bruce was sitting on. “This is a big step.”

“It’s not me I’m worried about,” Bruce admitted, fiddling with the edge of his hospital gown.

“Jen’s ready for this, whatever comes,” she reminded him. “And if she does turn big and green, she’ll be among friends when it happens.”

Bruce smiled and ducked his head. The anesthesiologist, the appropriately-named Doctor Nod, took that moment to come over and explain the dosages she was preparing for Bruce: normal levels at first, but increasing levels of dendrotoxin if it seemed things were beginning to go green. She then went to consult with the Walters family, leaving Natasha to help Bruce to lie down on the table.

The table was lightly padded, covered in a pathogen-resistant material and draped with surgical cloth, but Bruce still felt a shiver go up his spine at the thought of what he was about to allow to be done. He could feel Hulk stir lightly at his discomfort, and closed his eyes to concentrate on slowing his pulse and calming his nerves.

“What’s next for Bruce Banner?” Natasha asked, stroking a hand down his arm.

Recognizing the gesture as being part of the Lullaby routine, Bruce opened his eyes and smiled up at her. Inside, he could feel Hulk settle in contentment as well. “I don’t know. If everything goes well, I’ll let Hulk decide where we go next.”

“Send me a postcard?” she smiled.

“‘Wish you were here’,” he joked.

Doctor Wu stepped over to the table. “Doctor Nod is ready to start anesthesia. Doctor Banner, are you ready?”

“As I’ll ever be,” Bruce replied, then turned his head to look at his cousin. “Cuz, you ready?”

“Born ready,” Jen answered, eyes full of more things then Bruce could begin to count: peace, love, acceptance, relief, gratitude… courage. Whatever happened, Jen was clearly ready for it.

“Okay, then.” Warmth coursed through his veins as the sedative began to take hold, and Hulk obligingly remained quiescent to allow the drugs to take effect. Bruce smiled again, feeling a sense of optimism he hadn’t felt in years. “See you on the other side.”


End file.
